Category: economie
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Asian style
Read in China Digital Times of 26 June 2014: What the Russians are trying to do in and around Greater Moscow (17 million inhabitants), the Chinese are doing even on a grander scale with Beijing (22 million inhabitants): building an Asian megalopolis. I remember the session in the Intercontinental Hotel in Moscow in April…
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Strange, ironic
Heard in the Volkshotel, Amsterdam, on 17 September 2015: Theme of the first Ruimtevolk College last week at the Volkshotel (People’s Hotel) in Amsterdam was ‘Foreign capital in the city’. Two professors of the University of Amsterdam, Ewald Engelen (financial geography) and me (urban planning), were asked to give a lecture on the subject. Engelen…
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Volksvlijt – uitnodiging voor 9 september 2015
Heb jij ideeën of dromen over de stad van de toekomst? Wonen we anders dan nu en hoe ziet de nieuwe economie eruit? Hoe blijven we gezond in de metropoolregio Amsterdam? Wordt de stad nog groener? Hoe verplaatsen we ons in de toekomst en hoe zal ICT de stad veranderen? Kortom: wat vind jij waardevol?…
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Metro mayors
Read in The Economist of 6 June 2015: George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer in the UK Cameron administration, called the Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds-Sheffield urban region a new ‘Northern Powerhouse’. At least he wants it to become a new engine. The Economist agrees very much on that. Great Britain, it states, is one of the…
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Third Golden Age
Heard on 3 July 2015 at the Public Library in Amsterdam: In 1864 a Christal Palace was erected on the Frederiksplein, Amsterdam. The great tall building of glass and steel contained a huge space for exhibitions, showing all kinds of innovations of the industrial capitalist era. The Jewish entrepreneur and medical doctor Samuel Sharphati initiated…
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From the bottom up
Read in ‘Emergence’ (2001) of Steven Johnson: > OESO’s Territorial Review of the Netherlands 2014 advocated the making of a holistic strategic urban policy framework for cities by the Dutch government. Such a framework is lacking now. The Ministry of Interior Affairs started an open process this year for developing an ‘urban agenda’, which might…
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No growth
Read in FD of 1 March 2015: Why does nobody wants to know about shrinking cities in The Netherlands? Because Dutch municipalities still own 75% percent of all the land available for building homes, office space and business parks. They paid far too much for it: 13 billion euros. They all should reduce their land…
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Winner takes all
Read in The Economist of 12 June 2016: In the UK, just like in many other countries, regional inequality is growing fast. London is the big winner, cities in the North are the big losers. As Richard Florida already forecasted years ago, the world is getting pretty spiky. The principle is simple: ‘success breeds…
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Wall of Money
Read in NRC Handelsblad of 9 and 12 June 2015: Alarming news. Vacant real estate in the Netherlands since 2010 more than dubbeled. The total amount of square meters empty office space is now 9 million, of m2 empty retail space it’s 2,7 million. And it gets worse, even after the crisis. Why? Because…
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The creative gap
Read in The Atlantic of 28 May 2015: In 2003, at the opening of Westergasfabriek, Richard Florida visited Amsterdam for the first time. That was only one year after his ‘The Rise of the Creative Class’ (2002) first was published. I remember. All Dutch cities wanted to become creative after that great performance. More than…